Summary: Pressures associated with the rise of the so-called knowledge economy, increased participation in higher education and its consequences in terms of institutional differentiation, processes of political and administrative devolution and the desire for increased accountability of public funded institutions have all lead to a rediscovery in recent decades of the relevance and responsibility of higher education to local and regional communities.  Under such pressures universities have been keen to publicise their 'third mission' and show in particular that through the generation of a local pool of conceptual and managerial skills, the provision of applied research and other transfer activities, they have, more or less successfully , been able to define themselves the terms of their own engagement with their immediate locality.

Summary: This presentation provides a critical overview of the discourse concerning Higher Education as promoted by the EU with respect to the idea of rendering Europe the ‘most competitive knowledge economy’. This has implications for a variety of fields notably university continuing education and lifelong learning in general. A critical analysis of this EU discourse in light of recent trends in HE in various places in Europe will be provided.

Summary: Most development and planning strategies begin with doing 'needs surveys' or other methods of creating inventories of deficits and problems in a local community. The result of this approach is to focus on outside resources to 'fix' the locality or its' people. An 'asset based' approach is an alternative strategy that recognizes the you do not know what you need until you know what you have. This presentation will describe community approaches to doing 'capacity and asset inventories' as the initial and necessary step to achieve successful development initiatives.